Remember PETA? The group of animal activists that threw paint on fancy women wearing fur to shame them out of fox stoles and mink?

The same animal rights group – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – is once again finding targets for animal abuse and this time it’s H&M. PETA sent Green Prophet a press release that they are filing a shareholder resolution that asks the fashion giant to reinstate a ban on mohair, the fiber made from Angora goat hair.

“H&M can’t claim to care about animals while supporting the mohair industry, which mutilates, whips, and drags terrified goats to their deaths,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “The only humane materials are vegan, and PETA is calling on H&M to ban mohair immediately.”  

The move follows a new investigation by PETA Asia, which the group says shows goats being beaten, cut and left injured at farms certified under the Responsible Mohair Standard (RMS), a certification system meant to ensure animal welfare in the supply chain. According to PETA, one of the farms investigated supplies fiber through BKB, one of the world’s largest mohair exporters and a partner to global apparel brands.

The dispute highlights a familiar cycle in the fashion industry. In 2018, H&M suspended the use of mohair after reviewing earlier undercover footage from farms in South Africa that appeared to show rough shearing practices and the slaughter of goats. The company later reintroduced mohair in 2020, saying it would only source the fiber from farms certified under the Responsible Mohair Standard.

“I struggle to understand the contradiction of PETA,” says Alexander Smith, the Founder of Alexander Night, London College of Fashion Bespoke, “they seem to go hard on animal welfare yet they give their PETA certificate to brands who use vegan (plastic) leather, polyester and other synthetic materials that in my opinion cause more harm to animals than the leather and fur industry because they harm every single life form on the planet and will continue to do so for the 100+ years they’re on it.”

PETA argues the certification does not adequately protect animals and is now using shareholder activism to push the issue back onto the company’s agenda. Shareholder resolutions are a tactic increasingly used by environmental and social campaigners to force companies to address ethical concerns at annual meetings.

Peta showed “12 South African farms that revealed goat kids crying out in fear as they were roughly handled and shorn, and a worker slowly cutting the throats of fully conscious goats with a dull knife and then breaking their necks.”

Mohair has long been prized by fashion brands for its soft, glossy fibers used in sweaters, scarves and luxury knits. But it has also become a target for animal welfare campaigns.

According to PETA, nearly 300 fashion retailers have banned mohair in recent years following investigations into the industry. Those companies include Zara, Gap, Banana Republic, UNIQLO and Ralph Lauren, among others.

The question is whether campaigns like this still carry the same influence they once did. In the late 2010s, PETA investigations helped push several fashion houses away from fur, angora wool and exotic skins, accelerating the rise of plant-based textiles and synthetic alternatives.

Today the debate is shifting toward sustainable materials, circular fashion and lower-carbon textiles, where animal welfare is only one piece of a larger environmental conversation.

If you want to shop sustainable fibers, try my favorite sweater maker babaa. I own 3 sweaters. Look for mohair in second hand shops or your grandma’s closet.  Want to get involved? Download this animal empathy kit and share it with your friends.

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Luxury fashion, which not only leads the street, but often follows, is getting into the repurpose market. It started with Levi’s teaching Gen Z how to repair their clothes, Emirates airplane seats into trolleys, and now Coach.

A new collaboration between luxury brand Coach and textile reuse pioneer Bank & Vogue attempts to stitch those two worlds together: high fashion and the global textile waste stream. Textiles from fast fashion brands are filling up landfill. So much of it is poorly made with low-cost materials that the fashion items can’t be reused or reloved. 

“This Coach collection is our love letter to denim and to American heritage pieces that only get better with time,” says Stuart Vevers, Creative Director at Coach.

“Made with post-consumer materials and re-crafted with intention, each piece is truly one of a kind, shaped by the stories it already holds and the ones you’ll add. There’s an honesty in these pieces; lived-in, love-worn, and full of character. Perfectly imperfect in all the ways we value. Guided by our imagination — and our commitment to reducing our impact on the planet.”

Developed in partnership with Bank & Vogue, a global leader in textile reuse and recycling, the capsule transforms reclaimed denim into distinctive, one-of-a-kind designs. Each garment embraces visible character and individuality, reinforcing Coach’s ongoing commitment to circular fashion and responsible design practices.

And this is where the story gets interesting for sustainability watchers: Bank & Vogue isn’t a marketing construct. It’s an actual node in the global used-clothing economy.

As co-founder of the Bank & Vogue family of companies, Steven Bethell has been a thought leader and pioneer in the post-consumer textile space for over 25 years. He has dedicated his work life to innovative and relevant solutions to the crisis of stuff. Steven and his team have traveled to over 30 countries working extensively amongst the robust second-hand markets of the world.

Steven is also the brainchild behind the largest remanufacturing plant in the world, where the circular economy for textiles is brought to life. Taking post-consumer waste and transforming it into relevant products, Steven works with big brands to help them bring their sustainability platforms to the next level.

Translation: the jeans you once donated to charity may travel continents before becoming luxury goods. Circular fashion isn’t just a design choice — it’s logistics, sorting, labour, and global material flows.

The Coach RePurposed capsule is now available in Coach stores and online.

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Fashion’s next material revolution may not come from a lab in Paris or Milan — but from the tides of the Red Sea. Along Saudi Arabia’s coastline, scientists, designers, and textile innovators are transforming Sargassum seaweed into a wearable fabric, turning a fast-growing marine biomass into a new generation of sustainable textile. The initiative, led by KAUST Beacon Development in collaboration with the Saudi Fashion Commission and PYRATEX, is part of a broader effort to rethink how fashion sources its raw materials.

The project was recently presented as the Red Sea Seaweed Textile, demonstrating how locally sourced algae can be converted into blended yarns and finished garments. Stella McCartney does it. So why not Saudis?

“This material represents a milestone in our mission to build a future-focused, sustainable fashion ecosystem in Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates how local resources, scientific excellence, and creative talent can come together to deliver solutions for the global fashion industry,” said Burak Çakmak, CEO of the Saudi Fashion Commission.

KAUST’s role has been central. Its marine scientists studied the biochemical structure of Red Sea seaweed and developed responsible harvesting methods that preserve both the ecosystem and the algae’s functional properties.

An abaya made from seaweed?

“By researching the biochemical properties of Red Sea seaweed, we were able to integrate local algae species into an innovative blended yarn,” said Fiona Symes, COO of KAUST Beacon Development.

PYRATEX  then translated that biomass into textile form, blending the algae with Lyocell and organic cotton to produce a fabric that is breathable, traceable, and suitable for garment production. The Saudi Fashion Commission’s development studio produced complete garments from the material — not as conceptual pieces, but as real clothing.

Saudi Arabia’s fashion scene has been showing dynamic evolution. Recent runway shows in the Kingdom featured bathing suits in a historically very modest country.

These shows reflect a larger shift in how fashion in the Middle East engages global trends while honoring local sensibilities — moving beyond traditional expectations to embrace broader stylistic expressions that include functional, climate-appropriate swimwear alongside couture and everyday wear.

The seaweed fabric project reflects a growing shift across the fashion world. Designers such as Stella McCartney have long argued that sustainability cannot rely only on recycled synthetics or reduced harm. McCartney has repeatedly called for materials that are regenerative, ethical, and transparent — fibers that restore ecosystems rather than merely slow damage.

Luxury and performance brands alike are now experimenting with algae, mycelium, pineapple fiber, cactus leather, and agricultural waste. But what makes the Red Sea initiative distinctive is its regional grounding: a local marine resource transformed locally, with scientific validation and design integration.

Fashion is one of the most environmentally demanding industries on Earth, responsible for heavy water use, chemical pollution, and carbon emissions. Changing fabrics may seem small, but materials determine supply chains, farming practices, and waste streams.

Seaweed offers a radically different model. It grows without freshwater irrigation, fertilizers, or farmland. It absorbs carbon and regenerates rapidly. It does not compete with food systems. And it invites coastal stewardship rather than land exploitation.

For Saudi Arabia, this project also signals a broader narrative shift. The Kingdom is increasingly positioning itself not only as an energy producer, but as a knowledge and innovation economy — where science, sustainability, and culture intersect.

For fashion, the message is equally clear: the future of luxury will not be defined only by design houses, but by material intelligence. Garments made from seaweed may not replace cotton or polyester tomorrow. But they challenge designers, investors, and consumers to imagine clothing that begins in ecosystems rather than factories.

As Stella McCartney and other sustainability leaders have shown, fashion does not change when trends shift. It changes when materials do.

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Somewhere between TikTok hauls and next-day delivery, we forgot how to fix things. We forgot how to cook without an app and a pre-made box, grow food without a kit, and sew a button back onto a shirt without throwing the whole garment away. Clothing, once stitched with intention (my mother made her own dresses!), has become fast fashion and disposable. And with it, a quiet loss of skill, patience, and care.

Levi’s is trying to reverse that. The brand has launched a new program in high schools that teaches students how to repair, reinforce, and customize their own clothes. It’s a small intervention with big implications.

“At Levi Strauss & Co., we’ve spent more than 170 years designing clothes to be worn and loved for as long as possible. The Levi’s® Wear Longer Project builds on that legacy by giving young people the confidence and tools to extend the life of what they already own,” said Michelle Gass, President and CEO, Levi Strauss & Co. “By building up repair skills within the next generation and emphasizing the idea of durability, we’re helping spark a culture of creativity, sustainability, and pride in taking care of the things we value.”

The idea isn’t new. Many of us remember clothing swaps, community repair nights, and the early sustainability movement that made secondhand feel rebellious and smart. It carried the same spirit as freecycle and the pop-ups that would help women repair their clothes — spaces where fashion stopped being about perfection and started being about longevity. We also love it when people in big cities put clothes out on park benches. Nothing like finding a haul of cosy clothes.

For years, knitting circles, stitch-and-bitch nights, and repair cafés were quietly led by women in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. They weren’t trying to start trends. They were trying to make things last and they enjoyed creating and being together. Now, that knowledge is finally being passed to a generation that understands waste instinctively, but often lacks the tools to act on it.

In the 2010s, greening your wardrobe was pretty easy. But Gen Z doesn’t just want sustainability slogans. They want agency. My daughter is a Gen Z and she can repair jeans with a sewing machine, she can crochet a hat and halter top and she make a bag. Learning how to patch denim, reinforce seams, and turn damage into design gives young people something rare: control over consumption.

“Every year, millions of wearable garments end up in landfills, many taking centuries to decompose. By teaching repair, customization, and sustainable care, the Wear Longer Project interrupts that cycle,” said Alexis Bechtol, director of Community Affairs at Levi Strauss & Co.

Created with Discovery Education, the Levi’s Wear Longer Project brings clothing repair back into the classroom — not as a hobby, but as a core life skill. Through free lesson plans, teacher toolkits, and hands-on workshops, students learn how to sew, hem, patch, and redesign their clothes. The materials are built to fit directly into existing high-school programs for grades nine to twelve, making repair part of everyday learning rather than an after-school afterthought.

New research commissioned by Levi’s found that 41% of Gen Z lack any clothing repair or customization skills — from altering a hem to sewing a custom patch —  compared to less than 25% of older generations who often learned these skills at home or in school. However, 35% of Gen Z say they would keep their clothing for longer if they knew how to alter or repair them. 

​

Gen Z may lead the way in thrifting, swapping, and upcycling, but nearly half of those surveyed admitted they don’t know how to fix their clothes. Without repair skills, even the most circular fashion habits eventually collapse back into waste. The company argues that sustainability only works when durability is personal. Knowing how to extend the life of a garment is what turns environmental intention into real impact. Without that knowledge, circular fashion remains a theory instead of a practice.

In other words: you can love second-hand clothes all you want — but if you can’t repair them, they still end up in the bin.

The Levi’s Wear Longer Project is supported by a practical set of classroom-ready repair guides that make sustainability tangible, not theoretical. Students learn how to sew on buttons, hem clothing, patch holes, and fix tears through step-by-step facilitator and student guides designed for hands-on learning. Teachers can find the guides here –– with a version for students and one for teachers.

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There is something disarming about a company that publishes what didn’t work. I first came across this approach at startup events called FailCon, where high-tech founders would bare all and tell people about the mistakes of their lives — money they lost, lives they crushed. And we loved them more for it. Because for every company that works, there are probably a thousand that don’t.

Vivobarefoot, the shoe company taking on Nike and Adidas by turning technology inward — into the people who wear their shoes rather than external gels, soles, and supports — has made failure part of its annual reporting. You can find it laid out plainly in the Unfinished Business Report 2025, an integrated annual report that reads more like a working notebook.

Vivobarefoot is not a public company. There are no quarterly earnings calls to perform for, so they don’t need to do this. The business remains majority owned by the Clark family, with founders Galahad Clark and Asher Clark retaining control. A minority investment from Sofina Group provides patient capital, alongside a long-standing manufacturing partner and a small group of Crowdcube investors. That structure matters. It explains why this report can afford to be honest.

The report is clear about where things fell short. A strong women’s campaign delivered more than 11% growth but left men’s sales down 1% year-on-year, a reminder that focus can also create imbalance. VivoBiome, the much-celebrated scan-to-print footwear initiative, generated awards and media attention, but scanning and production bottlenecks limited volumes and sales.

There were also product issues, including waterproofing and bonding failures in the Tracker Low and High boots, now fixed, and persistent stock availability problems that meant customers often couldn’t get the styles they wanted. None of this is dramatized. It’s presented as information — signals from the system.

What sits alongside these limitations is slower, less flashy progress. ReVivo, Vivobarefoot’s resale and repair platform, now accounts for up to 15% of sales. More than 63,000 pairs were repaired or refurbished this year. During Repair Week, demand overwhelmed expectations — queues outside stores, thousands of repairs booked in days.

Financially, the company grew to £91.4 million in revenue, sold 1.2 million pairs, and maintained a B Corp score of 119.3. But the report resists the idea that regeneration can ever be “done.” Growth is treated as something fragile — easily undone by logistics, incentives, or execution. The company has also published reports by human resources which show a 7.5 happiness rating for employees.

I’ll add a small personal note. Early this year, Vivobarefoot sent us a pair of wool barefoot shoes. I didn’t love them at first. They felt less stable than the ones I’ve bought over the years with laces. (I run in barefoot shoes too). The soles, padded with a rubber/cork composite, irritated my feet in a way that felt like a warm tingling. Then, gradually when I was in Berlin in the fall, I started wearing them as an every day shoe. Somewhere along the way, they became the shoes I reach for every morning. The weather has something to do with it.

Vivobarefoot doesn’t promise instant transformation — of bodies, businesses, or systems. They even suggest that when you buy their shoes wear them at increments until you get used to them. Your better posture should come from within, not given to you by an inflexible sole and the security of a cushioned heel.

Unfinished Business 2025 offers a blueprint for companies people want to support and work for: a company willing to stay with discomfort, to publish what didn’t work and what does.

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One of the things I regret in my life is not buying a pair of Stella McCartney mushroom leather shoes at a TJ Max shop in Berlin. The price was within reach and they looked and felt so sturdy and iconic. All of us may have more chances to dance in sustainable style as Stella McCartney, the sustainable fashion icon and daughter of Paul McCartney, is working again with the fast fashion label H&M. Fast fashion, Zara, Shein, Mango and COS, show us that they aren’t going anywhere. What we can do is when we shop at these international chains is choose sustainable choices over those made from synthetics that leak microplastics.

“I’m excited to reunite with H&M after 20 years since our first collaboration. Reworking pieces from my archive brought back so much energy and joy. This second partnership feels like a chance to look at how far we’ve come on sustainability, cruelty-free practices and conscious design – and to stay honest about how far we still have to go—together.

Related: make mushroom paper and leather

“I am thrilled to have H&M join me on this road, real change only happens when we push from both the outside and the inside, and I’ve always believed in infiltrating from within to move the industry forward,” said Stella in a press announcement.

Stella not only delivers fashion, she’s the first of the big brands to actually integrate fungus, and plant-based plastics into her pieces, runways and collections. With Balena, she chose the Israeli biodegradable plastic company for her running shoes, she’s worked with cinnamon waste in these biodregadable shoes. And she uses a mushroom based leather for her fashion pieces in clothing and footwear.

What’s the plan with H&M? The collection isn’t launched yet but let’s hope it will be bold.

H&M’s Creative Advisor Ann-Sofie Johansson (pictured above) said: “Stella’s designs have changed the course of fashion history: they championed sustainable practices long before that conversation became mainstream.

“Her work is always joyful, playful, energetic.”

The Stella McCartney H&M collection will launch in stores and online in Spring 2026. The collection will feature certified, responsible materials – many of which are recycled – showcasing examples of alternatives for conventional fabrics and textiles.

This announcement comes 20 years since McCartney’s first collection for the label where they celebrated sustainability, cruelty-free practices and conscious designs. We can’t wait to preview the collection soon!

::Stella McCartney and sustainability

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We walked in expecting to see organic cotton clothes, but were surprised to smell a universe of alternative fragrances you won’t find at La Labo. There is a La Labo in Berlin. But we suggest you head to the hipper part of town, to Kreutzberg and stop at Voo. Not an easy price point on anything there –– Voo shirts for $800 my daughter noticed, but for a worthwhile $250 you can have a non-commercial scent that isn’t exactly bespoke, but pretty close to it. We’ve loved using natural perfumes like Ayala Moriel, but they tend to wear off quickly.

The concept shop carries clothing, a cafe, ceramics that look they fell off a flea market truck and were left behind (the kind we like best) but we couldn’t have known that Voo would be selling the smells of your autobiography. Welcome to Berlin! Voo’s selection offers something between sustainable and a commercial option although we can’t vouch for the ingredients in each bottle. A scent in their showroom called Chinese Tobacco caught our eye and nose.

Since the wall came down between East and West, Berlin has been a city of soft chaos and graffiti, attracting misfits from all over the world. The Voo perfumes, found in an alley by Green Fuzz and a great wool shop on Oranienstrasse feel like emotional codes. Here are some of the brands that are curated to be far from mainstream perfumes and scents sponsored by big money and full of artificial enhancements.

Ephemeral Dyadic – a range of perfumes made in Turkey and for those who walk home alone at night by choice. Ephemeral Dyadic is a perfume project founded in 2023 by artist Sinan Saul in a small art studio in Istanbul’s industrial district. The name ‘Ephemeral’ means ‘temporary’, while ‘Dyadic’ stands for ‘the relationship between two subjects’. Drawing inspiration from the concept that scents are fleeting but emotions are eternal, each fragrance creates a unique bond between the wearer and memory.

• Dark Dreams — Smells like a club bathroom mirror at 3:47 AM, where you meet your own eyes and briefly believe you could start over.

• Ozymandias — All the fallen empires of your past relationships bottled with quiet dignity.

• Bodhi & Utah — Desert sage drifting through urban glass — a spiritual prank.

Notes de Bas de Paje is a French parfumerie d’auteur — less a fragrance brand and more a keeper of personal archives. Each extrait de parfum is treated like a fragment of memory, a page torn from a life story, meant to be worn close and shared with no one unless invited. Crafted in small volumes, deeply intimate, Notes de Bas de Paje makes perfume for people who treat scent as narrative, not accessory.

The niche perfume house founded in 2023 by Alice Gensse and Pierre‑Jr Menana. The name plays on the French term for footnote, note de bas de page. Committed to ethical, gender-neutral, and fully French production, the brand approaches fragrance as a literary gesture. Each scent is a subtle, personal, and meaningful sensory footnote that tells a story.

Some of their scents:

• Towédé — Amber fruit drying in the sun, violet smoke rising like memory.

• Olatua — Saltwater soul retrieval.

• Prolégomènes — Smells like the unfinished introduction to a revolution.

19-69: Founded by Swedish artist and product developer Johan Bergelin, 19-69 takes its name from 1969, a year marked by Woodstock, the Stonewall riots, the moon landing, radical art movements, and the death of the Summer of Love. But we didn’t smell patchouli. Bergelin treats perfume like a cinematic road trip — each scent born from a place where youth culture collided with counterculture, where something ended and something more dangerous began.

Influenced by Helmut Newton flash photography, biker films, cheap motel carpets, and the romantic dirt of subculture, the brand doesn’t decorate life — it documents it. These aren’t polite fragrances; they smell like movement, migration, rebellion, and sweat drying in the sun on unfamiliar skin.

Fragrances:

• MIAMI BLUE — Chlorine, sweat, careless decisions.

• Chinese Tobacco — The scent of a hidden backroom where someone rolls a cigarette with ritual precision. Tobacco leaf, tea smoke, and the holy pause between inhale and exhale. Maybe it was your dad’s wine cigar in the 70s. Be transported in this scent of a time machine that can take you back and transport you into the future.

::Voo 

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As the light gets lower and the days grow shorter, sunglasses become less of a summer fling and more of an everyday essential. When the world was more naive, entrepreneurs made sustainable shades out of wood. Now the The Avantguard—a woman-owned luxury eyewear brand founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Faiza Seth—is betting that the accessory you reach for most should also be the one you feel best about. Its new Autumn/Winter Edit shows how eco-luxury can be more than a mood board: it can be a measurable design choice.

Materials with intent. Instead of relying on virgin, petroleum-based plastics, The Avantguard frames are crafted from biodegradable, recycled, and plant-based acetates. The goal: cut fossil inputs, keep the hand-feel and durability luxury frames demand, and design from the start for lower impact.

Every pair ships with UV400 lenses for full-spectrum UV defense and blue-light protection—a detail that traces back to Seth’s personal experience with early-stage cataracts and her desire to blend medical prudence with everyday elegance. Circular by design. Beyond the frames, the brand leans into plastic-free, recyclable, and reusable packaging and a partnership with AirRobe, which makes it easy to resell or rehome glasses for a second life. That’s a practical nudge toward longevity and waste reduction.

Luxury that lasts. The collection favors timeless silhouettes over trend churn—an underrated sustainability lever. As Seth puts it: “For me, it’s about buying better, buying less, and investing in products that stand the test of time.”

From rich tortoiseshells to smoky, translucent hues, the palette channels changing light, bark, loam, and sky—frames that feel at home on a forest walk or a weekday commute.

Why this qualifies as a sustainable idea (not just sustainable styling)

Material substitution: shifting from conventional plastics to plant-based/biodegradable and recycled acetates reduces dependence on virgin petrochemistry. Use-phase health benefit: UV400 + blue-light filtering supports long, frequent wear—extending product life by making the functional case for sunglasses year-round. System thinking: circular pathways (resale/rehome) and low-waste packaging mean the sustainability story doesn’t stop at checkout. Durability and design for keeps: classic silhouettes curb the “buy-discard-repeat” loop that dominates accessories.

The Avantguard’s Autumn/Winter Edit doesn’t treat sustainability as a seasonal color; it treats it as a product requirement—materials, packaging, and circularity all pulling in the same direction. If eco-luxury is to mean anything in 2025, it should look a lot like this: fewer, better things that protect your eyes, respect the planet, and still feel beautiful in the hand.

Editor’s note: we will update readers after hands-on testing of a pair from the Autumn Edit.

::Avantguard

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Related: Stella McCartney creates shoes from cinnamon

“But once people learn more about it, they are like, ‘Okay, interesting.’”Al-Rashdan’s plant-based dresses, bags, and accessories have walked runways from Paris to Dubai and earned her a string of awards. Unlike the synthetic textiles that clog landfills for decades, her creations are designed to decay. “These clothes are not meant to last forever,” she says.

“They have served their purpose. It’s okay for them to go away.”

An architectural engineer by training, Al-Rashdan began experimenting with plant-based textiles in 2015. She learned to transform food waste—like beetroot skins, olive pulp, and onion peels—into biodegradable materials. Some are fed into a 3D printer to make handbags, coins, and jewelry; others are spun into fabrics for high-fashion dresses.

One standout piece: a collaboration with designer Tony Ward on a wispy, biodegradable gown that debuted at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week.

Every year, the fashion industry produces 92 million tonnes of textile waste—the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothes dumped or burned every second. Much of it ends up in developing countries, releasing microplastics and toxic dyes into the environment.

According to UNEP, the sector is also responsible for up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the most water-hungry industries on Earth.

Al-Rashdan’s work has been boosted by the West Asia Sustainable Fashion Academy, launched by the UN Environment Programme in 2021. The academy has trained over 150 designers, fashion students, and small businesses to use sustainable fabrics, extract natural pigments, and rethink waste.

Fellow participant Hazem Kais, head of Beirut’s GoodKill label, dyes garments with sage, walnut, and pomegranate instead of chemical dyes. “If we can dye clothes this way, why wouldn’t we?” he says.

For Al-Rashdan, every sustainable choice—no matter how small—counts. “I’m hopeful,” she says. “Every change, even a small one, matters.”

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What happens to a car’s airbag after it’s decommissioned? In Kyiv, the answer is unexpectedly stylish. Pilsok, a Ukrainian accessories label founded in 2007, has released backpacks and shoulder bags cut from retired airbags—light, durable nylon engineered to save lives now saving materials from landfill. The team explained that it can take “about three airbags to create one backpack,” and that they “came across airbags taken from disassembled cars” after testing other surplus materials.

Pilsok says the bags are cut and stitched in-house in Kyiv, with each piece reflecting the folds, seams and printed codes of the airbag it came from—making every bag unique by design.

Pilsok isn’t alone. In Zurich, FREITAG launched the F700 ARROW and F708 FIREBIRD shoppers “made from accident-free airbags and used tension belts,” embracing a “bag-follows-form” approach that preserves the original folds and shapes.

Germany’s AIRPAQ manufactures backpacks and accessories by reusing “discarded car airbags, seat belts, and belt buckles,” and has been recognized by European retail and innovation programs for circular design.

The same upcycling logic has reached aviation. In 2025, Emirates announced a second “Aircrafted by Emirates” drop: a limited run of 167 handmade pieces crafted from retrofitted A380 and 777 interiors, from aluminum headrests to leather and seatbelts.

Airbag textiles are engineered for extreme stresses—lightweight, tear-resistant, and stable when stitched—so they’re a natural fit for durable day bags. Upcycling research also shows that objects with a visible “prior life” can carry stronger emotional stories, nudging buyers toward repair and long use. As one study neatly put it, “turning an old car airbag into a backpack.

20 years of R-R-R: what’s next

Two decades into mainstream Reduce–Reuse–Recycle, fashion’s center of gravity is shifting from one-off “eco” drops to circular design—materials that can loop, products built for repair, and business models that favor take-back, refurbishment, and resale. The upcycled-airbag movement is one thread in a larger fabric: premium brands are trialing biobased and compostable polymers, experimenting with “living” or self-healing materials, and investing in traceability so customers can see a product’s full story. For a deeper dive into how circular design is maturing, see Green Prophet’s analysis of what circular design means in 2025.

Pilsok’s work is a pragmatic, local example of circularity: identify a high-performance waste stream (retired airbags), design with its constraints (panels, folds, labels), manufacture locally, and make repairable, long-lived products. It sits comfortably alongside other stories we’ve tracked at Green Prophet—from aviation upcycling to new materials—showing how design thinking has matured since the early days of R-R-R.

Related reading on Green Prophet

Upcycled aviation: Emirates turns retired aircraft into luxury bags (limited-edition “Aircrafted” collection).

Biomaterials & circular design: Stella McCartney’s compostable sneakers (BioCir® Flex); Stella McCartney chooses Balena for upcycled foamy fashion; living plastics that clean water; ten future-forward sustainable fashion companies; slow and sustainable fashion through your eyewear; and our overview of circular design in 2025.

DIY upcycling roots: turn old T-shirts into bags; fuse plastic bags into durable sheeting; and a very early look at creative reuse in recycled map “infobags”. For more, browse our sustainable fashion and circular fashion archives.

 

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